The famous Mojave Cross - stolen two years ago from its perch in the Mojave Desert not long after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld its being posted on public land - mysteriously showed up Monday on the side of a road in Half Moon Bay, authorities said.

San Mateo County officials were alerted by KGO-TV News Monday morning about a possibly valuable cross attached to a fence post along Highway 35.

"It was way out there," San Mateo sheriff's spokeswoman Rebecca Rosenblatt said about the location of the cross, which was affixed to a post with plastic ties and had a note taped to it stating that someone should notify authorities.

Rosenblatt said the deputies contacted the National Park Service and spoke to an officer who confirmed unique markings as being the same as on the missing cross. "Right now, it's in safekeeping until its return to the rightful owners. It would go back to the Mojave Desert," she said. '

The cross was erected on Sunrise Rock in 1934 to honor war dead, and had been destroyed and reconstructed over the years. It ultimately became the focus of a legal battle before the U.S. Supreme Court. It had been covered up with boards after lower courts ruled its religious message violated the constitutional separation of church and state.

The court ruled in a 5-4 decision in April 2010 that the cross was legal because the land where it was posted had been transferred to a veterans organization and that the Constitution did not ban all religious displays. When it was erected, the land was public.

A month later, it was stolen. Just this year, a land swap with the Veterans of Foreign Wars - removing Sunrise Rock from the Mojave National Preserve - was approved by the California U.S. Central District Court. A new cross was erected, said Thomas Tradewell Sr., who was commander of the VFW at the time of the theft.

"We had to fight to get either the land put in our name or the ability to display the cross," Tradewell said. "This year, the ruling came out, the fact that they gave the land to the VFW."

Tradewell said the original cross should be kept in a safe place to honor its history.

"From what I understand the cross they made now was made to last forever - this would sound like the best of both worlds: to have the original kept where no one can deface it or steal it again, and still have the one there that is a memorial that will be standing forever."